Any discussion of prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Restaurants strive to provide a good customer experience so that customers will return and tell others of their good experience. Providing a good customer experience includes providing quality food but it also includes focusing resources on the customer during their visit. These resources include waitstaff that interacts with the customer during their visit to monitor and fulfill the customer's needs.
When customer traffic increases, such as during peak dining periods, the waitstaff can become overloaded and the customer experience is less enjoyable because the waitstaff fails to identify and fulfill all of the customer's needs. This failure may cause the waitstaff and the customers to become frustrated further diminishing the customer experience. In addition to diminishing the customer experience, the waitstaff misses opportunities to up-sell the customer or sell additional beverages or menu items causing the restaurant to miss out on additional revenue.
A similar problem can exist in other types of businesses where a customer typically waits while a service is being performed or a product is being prepared. During the wait time the customer have little or no contact with employees of the business since they are usually helping customers that just arrived or are making a payment before leaving. If the customer wants information or a progress update, they must usually wait in a line with newly arrived customers or try to find an employee that is not busy. Examples of these kinds of businesses include tire stores, auto repair centers, oil change centers, computer repair stores, restaurants with food take-out area where a customer orders food and waits for it to be prepared to take home and hospital emergency centers where non-critical patients check in and wait, sometimes for hours, before seeing a doctor.